Every fall we get grapes from a variety of places. Konnowac Vineyards near Moxee, E&E Shaw on Red Mountain, Fruitland Vineyard near Spokane, Crawford Vineyard near Prosser, or Groda Ranch in Burlington. We bring them home in fruit lugs. After picking though the grapes to remove sticks, stones, bugs and cell phones, we dump the grapes into the hopper of a crusher-destemmer machine. This breaks the skins and removes most of the stems.

Yeast and nutrients are added to the mushy grapes, known as “must” and then we tend the grapes multiple times each day for the 2-3 weeks that they ferment. As the sugar is converted to alcohol, the entire house smells incredible.

After fermentation is done, we press the grapes to separate the skins and seeds from the juice, and basically we have very young wine at this point. It’s interesting to taste the wine as we press it, because it changes throughout the process.

Our white and rose wines are crushed, destemmed, and pressed all upon arrival so we ferment just the juice. And we run all our reds through ML, to soften the acids and smooth the wines.

Red wines are aged in barrels, white wines in stainless tank, and everything is bottled when it’s ready. Want more specifics on the process? Click on the link to the grapes of a particular year and follow our process this year. I update that page regularly.